Ekphrasis XIII 2024 Online Exhibition
SET 5. Visual Artist Initiators and their Writer Responders
P. SEV ICKES, Caty-ywampus. Response by author ROB HAWTHORNE: "That Jammy Cat."
2 on 1: TWO WRITERS RESPOND TO ONE ARTWORK (a photograph)
Q. PAT TOTH-SMITH, Eucalyptus Morning #1. Response by KAILYN MCCORD: "The Trees."
R. PAT TOTH-SMITH, Eucalyptus Morning #2. Response by LESLIE WAHLQUIST: "Ozark."
S. KAREN BOWERS, Among the Trees. Response by Matthew Long: "Blue Whales of the Plant World."
SET 5. Visual Artist Initiators and their Writer Responders
P. SEV ICKES, Caty-ywampus. Response by author ROB HAWTHORNE: "That Jammy Cat."
2 on 1: TWO WRITERS RESPOND TO ONE ARTWORK (a photograph)
Q. PAT TOTH-SMITH, Eucalyptus Morning #1. Response by KAILYN MCCORD: "The Trees."
R. PAT TOTH-SMITH, Eucalyptus Morning #2. Response by LESLIE WAHLQUIST: "Ozark."
S. KAREN BOWERS, Among the Trees. Response by Matthew Long: "Blue Whales of the Plant World."
N. Initiating artist SEV ICKES:
Caty-ywampus
Caty-ywampus
N. Response by author ROB HAWTHORNE:
"That Jammy Cat"
"That Jammy Cat"
Please take a good look at this fantastic portrait.
My brother, Stephen and I came to know this character very well when we were children, due to the fact that our mother was a big fan of the artist. The first time she brought one of the artist’s paintings into our little redwood hippie home on the ridge, Stephen was entranced. Of course, my mom was delighted, because like I said, she was a fan. Over a period of nine months, she brought in other pieces painted by this lady. Adorable, charming, folksy, and extremely uplifting paintings. They were populated with landmarks from the town we were growing up in and featured all the people we knew there. We had the painting with a large boat filled with animals; two of every one. We had the painting of the yellow house with the lady from the library and the couple from the cookie store and the grumpy guy who sat around outside the fire station. These paintings were an immense joy to us children and again, my mom. One afternoon, while Stephen stood mesmerized by one of these fun little masterpieces, he asked me to look at one of the characters poking out between two bushes. It was the cat you see in this painting. My brother called him a jammy cat. I’m not sure what he meant by it but he’d always say, “He’s a jammy cat. A jammy, jam, jazzy cat.” And from that description, the Jammy Cat came to be. Right away, we started to notice him pop up in other paintings. He was on the Noah’s boat, tucked away like an Easter Egg. We spotted him in the little framed portrait at the pharmacy, also painted by this artist. |
It became a thing for my brother, a quest to find the Jammy Cat. If he saw a copy of a print or painting we had in our home, he’d look for this scamp with the confident lazy eyes and the snappy bow-tie, almost like he expected him to be hiding someplace different.
Sometime in high school, I forgot where the Jammy Cat was in the art at home. I could spend a few minutes or maybe thirty, looking for him without results and Stephen would come over, spend an equal amount of time, then point him out to me in a spot I swore I looked. I came home from college once and my brother was glued to one of these paintings. He said to me, “I can’t find him.” I said, “look harder Stevie. He’s there. You always find that Jammy Cat.” And when I tried to help him, it was no use. I think the older I got, the harder it became to find this cat. I’m in my fifties now, and I can’t find the Jammy Cat for the life of me. I know he’s there. I once heard someone say that the artist never did a painting without him. Maybe it’s too late for me. Maybe I’m too old to see this sly little rascal, this jazzy cat with the high collar and snappy bow tie. Or maybe I gave up to soon. Stephen still looks. He’s got all of the art from the hippie house on the ridge, and he goes through it obsessively, pointing out all the people we knew back in the day, and looking and looking and looking until he finds his old friend. Stephen is almost fifty, but you’d never know it. He hasn’t given up. He’s never stopped looking, and I suppose that finding this joyous cat is part of what keeps him young. |
2 on 1: TWO WRITERS RESPOND TO ONE ARTWORK (a photograph)
Q and R: Initiating artist, PAT TOTH-SMITH:
"Eucalyptus Morning" for responses #1 and #2 below.
"Eucalyptus Morning" for responses #1 and #2 below.
Response #1
O. Responding author, KAILYN MCCORD:
"The Trees"
"The Trees"
Tricia stands in line and listens to the women in front of her talk. They are Marlene and Karen, which Tricia knows only from their recent exclamatory salutation. There are four people behind her, and although the checkout girl has told Karen her total twice, still Karen has not paid. The conversation has moved from talk of tourists to talk of husbands to, finally, talk of the traffic and the trees.
“Oh it's criminal,” Karen is saying, bulging her eyes wide. “I waited thirty minutes the other day. Thirty! And what an eyesore, all... naked! And, did they even ask anyone? I mean did they even think of the property values?” “I know,” Marlene says, patting Karen's arm. “I know.” The women begin to say their goodbyes. Tricia closes her eyes. She knows how they'll hug without needing to watch, the gap-bodied, soft-armed mimic common to the etiquette of the rich. She thinks of how recently she has hugged someone, how it was Shauna just that afternoon, standing by the coffee maker at the back of the church. She left the meeting buoyed, proud of her thirty days and the chip in her pocket, the circuitous route it taken to get there, imbued hand to hand around the room with the faith of those who had listened to her speak. She feels it there against the wad of real money, which she pulls out, impatient to pay, stop at the laundromat, get back to the shelter and sleep. Tricia opens her eyes. |
Karen is quiet, lips pursed, staring the checkout girl down. She pets the open fold of a checkbook, presses it flat to the tiny platform above the register. A sign on the glass: no checks under twenty five dollars, please.
Tricia has managed not to cry all day – not when the CalTrans men came, finally, and told her it was time to clear her camp; not when she packed her things and walked into town; not when she filled out her paperwork at the shelter. She has not cried even here, in line, in part because it was easy to see how little they actually knew of the trees. How you cannot know a eucalyptus forest until you've slept beneath it in a rainstorm, at the mercy of its sway; how there is no quiet like a fog among the eucs; how once, she spent an entire morning laying in her bag, watching a single flap of bark twist in the wet breeze, flashing orange, brown, orange again. It was the thing she loved most, what she would miss most: their unremarkable skin, how underneath was something brilliant you could only see if you caught them at the moment they left it behind. And so she would not cry for this. Not today. “Here,” Tricia says and leans across the conveyor, ignoring Karen's exaggerated flinch. She drops two twenties – most of what she has in the world – onto the scanner. “I – ” Karen starts to say. “Is that enough?” Tricia asks the checkout girl. “Yes,” she says. And Tricia walks out into the fog. |
Response #2
R. Responding Writer LESLIE WAHLQUIST:
"Ozark"
R. Responding Writer LESLIE WAHLQUIST:
"Ozark"
I started college in 1974, four hours up the west coast from my home town. My roommate was loud and vapid, the only thing we had in common was smoking cigarettes. I quickly put on ten pounds punching a meal ticket with unlimited shakes, fries and bacon. I enrolled in far too many classes and earned a C in ceramics—a class taken to pad my GPA. My dormmates embraced the novelty of total freedom, but I’d had plenty of it in my short life—wild abandon held little appeal.
I considered dropping out. I started taking long, solitary walks up the canyon behind campus, on a trail skirted with graceful, towering trees. They had a wonderfully spicy scent and an interesting pattern of white and gray bark. Long, tapered leaves on thin branches swept the breeze and bell-shaped pods of silver hung in clusters, the older ones wooden and brown with five holes like a sacred pentagram. Rain or shine I hiked the canyon under the canopy of eucalyptus trees. One Saturday I rode a shuttle to the town market and stopped at a truck selling flowers from its tailgate. What caught my eye was behind the flowers: two puppies in a wire cage. “You selling those?” I asked the man. “I might,” he replied. “Could I hold the white one with the black tips?” He took out my dog and handed him over. He was nine weeks old, fuzzy and wise, with giant paws at the end of sturdy legs. I negotiated a price of fifty dollars—the amount of allowance my dad sent each month. Reluctantly, I handed back the puppy and promised to bring him the money. Fifty dollars covered everything I’d need for the coming month. This month I needed a puppy. |
Saturday finally arrived and the man was there as promised. He’d brought along the pup’s mother, a long-legged white wolf with yellow eyes, and a photograph of the father, a part-wolf black husky. Somehow, the consequences of this venture never occurred to me. I gave him the money and tucked the little fur ball close to my heart.
It was January, the rainy season in San Luis Obispo, and for weeks I snuck him into the dorms inside my raincoat. While I was in class, he’d sleep on my bed and when I wasn’t, we’d head up the canyon, playing for hours under the forest of eucalyptus trees. I made him a collar of fragrant eucalyptus pods macramed into leather lace with tiny brass bells and bits of abalone shell I’d collected on the beach. Everywhere we went people admired my dog and his unique collar. I made more, and sold them to buy kibble for my rapidly growing pup—I could only smuggle so many hamburgers and pork chops from the cafeteria. Before long, I procured a boyfriend with a fenced-in yard off campus who loved my growing-larger-by-the-day puppy. He suggested I name him Ozark. I liked it. Eventually, Ozark and I gave up on college and moved to the Rocky Mountains and for fourteen years he was my truest companion. Years later, when I drove the eucalyptus-lined highway into Mendocino, I remembered those days and vowed to return to the coast (and the me) I’d been away from for far too long. |